Natalie Darwitz Practices with Minnesota Wild

ST. PAUL --To kick off
Girls Hockey Weekend
, Natalie Darwitz took the ice at Xcel Energy Center with the Minnesota Wild to participate in practice.
Darwitz, a three-time Olympic medalist and two-time national champion with the Minnesota Gophers, wore a green jersey and skated in rush drills with the team, bearing down on Devan Dubnyk a few times to score. She is the first woman to ever don a Wild jersey and practice with the club.
"I'm just pretty grateful to be out there," Darwitz said. "It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

Darwitz spent some of practice skating and chatting with Zach Parise. The last time they were on the ice together, according to Parise, was in 1992, when Darwitz was 9 and Parise was 8. Back then, they were on the same team.

"I played on a couple teams with her, and she was always our best player," Parise said. "It was neat to fast-forward all these years and see her on the ice again and watch her out there."
After a storied international hockey career, Darwitz is currently behind the bench for at Hamline University, where she's the head coach of the women's program. She told a few players that she hadn't skated in a full practice since the Olympics, which Ryan Suter called "not even fair."
After participating in drills, Darwitz watched systems work unfold. While she was skating, her husband, Chris, snapped a few photos of her, and her 17-month-old son, Joseph, proudly pointed her out among the crowd before falling fast asleep.

At 5 feet 3 inches, Darwitz was quite a bit shorter than the rest of the lineup, so much so that the team joked 5-foot-9 defenseman Jared Spurgeon was no longer the shortest one on the team. The team was clearly impressed by her skills, cheering her on as she skated and tapping sticks on the ice in approval of her moves.
"It's amazing when you don't watch girls hockey too much [and] then you look at it and how skilled they are," said Wild coach Bruce Boudreau. "I saw her receiving passes and snapping the puck there. I said, 'That's pretty good.' The biggest difference is obviously the size and the strength, but her stride in skating was just like the guys."